Ebraisti e filologi. Per una storia della didattica dell'ebraico

The article, an hommage to Giuliano Tamani’s career as a professor of Hebrew, delineates a first sketch of a much desirable and still missing history of Hebrew teaching and learning in the modern age. Two important trends are identified from a cursory survey and their peculiar dialectics is characterized and specified through some examples: on the one hand, the tendency to a growing degree of complexity, be it grammatical, syntactical, etymological and comparatistic and, on the other hand, the constant preoccupation with efficacity and accessibility, especially for beginners, theologians and aspiring members of the clergy alike. As a peculiar device, once popular, for simplifying the determination of the triliteral root, the distichs Abjice serviles are analyzed and the long-forgotten history and fortune of this mnemotechnical tool is reconstructed. The author of the verses, oftentimes quoted anonymously in later grammars, is identified as Heinrich Hahn, who published the verses in the Hebrew grammar for beginners authored by Johann Dinckel and appeared in print in 1579. As an appendix, a tentative bibliography of all the occurrences of the poem from the Renaissance to our days completes the study.